Exploring Wine: The Culinary Institute of America's Complete Guide to Wines of the World (Hospitality, Travel & Tourism)

Designed for both serious and amateur wine buyers, as well as apsiring culinary professionals, this lively guide demystifies every aspect of wine. It explores wines, country-by-country, and provides excellent coverage on pairing food and wine, how to purchase, store, and serve wine. Also includes chapters on wine management, wine list development, and wine marketing. Illustrations throughout.

Why another wine book? First, this one is by wine educators from the Culinary Institute of America, whose other fine works (The New Professional Chef, LJ 8/91) and outstanding reputation lend it gastronomical authority. Second, Exploring Wine has an unfettered clarity, whether explaining formulas to calculate a reasonable price range or steps to produce the most beneficial wine-tasting experience or ways to select from the deluge of international choices. Third, there is a superb chapter on matching food and wine, full of tables and menus, which simultaneously honors classical principles of experimentation and personal preference. If these reasons aren't sufficient, there's the concise background information on wine-making, the world tour of producers, the coffee-table-book photographs, the section devoted to collecting, appendixes of American appellations and official classifications of Bordeaux, and a 12-page glossary. Definitely not just "another wine book." Highly recommended.
Wendy Miller, Lexington P.L., Ky.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.